


Ten of Swords

by owlaholic68



Series: Try Again [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2
Genre: Blood and Injury, Character Death, Deaf Character, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss of Limbs, Nightmares, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 20:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15150902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: Carla is done. She’s earned her happy ending. But will she be able to keep it?





	Ten of Swords

 

Raider attacks are not particularly unusual this time of the year. Early spring means that they’re finally braving the outside temperatures, and early-spring raiders are _hungry,_ both for food and murder.

Carla decides that they will have neither. Waiting in the shadow of Arroyo’s front gate, she nods up at Marcus, who makes a signal to the captain of the Arroyo guard.

“Get ready,” she mutters, tightening her grip on her pistol. A glance behind her confirms that Lenny is at her shoulder. He always is, no matter the danger. How many years, how many torturous cycles eased by his presence?

How many where he died?

Too many. She shakes the thought. That’s all over now. One hundred cycles, and now she no longer counts like that, keeping track of the months and years instead. Six years. Six cycles never lived, six deaths never realized.

The gates bust open. The raiders rush forward, their faces triumphant at this unexpected victory. These raiders must be fresh, naïve, because this is the oldest trick, an obvious trap. They don’t make it a foot in the door before they realize they’re surrounded. A few try to run, but most are caught in the hail of gunfire from the village’s defenders.

Careless. Carla has grown complacent and careless. This is the part in a cycle where she would stop keeping watch at night, where she would leave the Highwayman’s lights running instead of finding a place to camp, where she wouldn’t watch her back in New Reno. Carelessness has ended her life countless times. It cost her her arm, her hearing, her peace of mind.

It’s about to cost her something far more precious.

The last raider falls, and Carla hasn’t been paying attention to her surroundings, too focused on the fight. As she looks around, she sees a few villagers limping away with the help of others, presumably to Lenny’s clinic for healing.

Lenny. A curl of dreads winds itself in her throat. Where’s Lenny? She turns to her left, but he’s missing from his usual spot. To the right. Nothing. Behind her, and her turn is a panicked whirl.

“Len?” She cries out, knowing well that she won’t get an answer. When she turns back to look at the village, she doesn’t see the newly rebuilt Arroyo, but a smashed ruin of tents. Plumes of pungent smoke wind into the sky.

“Marcus?” She yells, but she’s alone. Not even Dogmeat is in sight.

Carla turns back towards the destruction and starts walking. She’ll find what she needs in here. Rows of tents look as they did on the day of Arroyo’s worst day, the same day that she’s seen time and time again. But the corpses are all gone, leaving her more alone than she’s ever been. At least in the wasteland, there are animals, or the corpses of raiders, or something to keep her a morbid sort of company.

She walks through ruin and sparse forest until she reaches the Temple of Trials. A blink, and she’s holding her Pip-Boy in her left hand, her spear in the other. She has two hands again. Birdsong comes from the trees behind her, and in the distance she can hear a dog barking. How long has it been since she’s been able to hear?

It’s July 25, 2241. 8:45 in the morning. She’s back on the day of her test. Maybe all of _that_ horror was the dream, and she’s back in cycle zero, where everything is fine and she’s never died.

Or maybe she _did_ die, and this is cycle one hundred and one, and she has to do this all over again.

Either way, she walks into the Temple as she’s done one hundred times. Going through the trials is simple, easy, muscle memory at this point. Then she gets to the end. This is where Cameron should be. She just has to convince him not to fight, or, if that fails as it occasionally has, the battle is not particularly difficult.

Cameron is not there. Lenny is.

“Len,” she gasps, dropping her spear and stepping forward with one hand over her mouth. He’s lying face down on the floor with a knife in his back. As she steps closer, barefoot, her toes squelch as she steps into a thick pool of blood. She shakes her head, desperately hoping that this is _not_ what she’s seeing. Shakily, she kneels, the bright blue of her vault suit turning dark, almost black.

“No, Len.” She takes a Stimpack from her belt and stabs it into his arm. It does nothing.

“No.” Another Stimpack in his shoulder.

“No, no!” One in the back of his neck, one between his shoulder blades.

“No. _Please._ Len.” These Stimpacks should be at least stopping the bleeding, but they’re doing _nothing._

“Don’t-don’t _do_ this, I can’t do this again,” she pleads, sticking him full of Stimpacks until it looks like he’s been stabbed with nine daggers, the actual knife in his back being the tenth. And yet, he doesn’t move. She feels for a pulse, but there’s only cold skin under her numb and slippery fingers, which is wrong because Lenny has always been warm, unnaturally so, burning hot like he had a nuclear core.

Carla wants to scream. She tears at her long hair and sobs and knows that this was going to happen someday, this is what she gets for trying to bring people with her, for trying to save _anyone,_ because if she can’t even keep one person alive, how is she going to save Arroyo?

She’s going to have to try again. She just needs one more chance at this, and when that attempt fails, one more try after that won’t hurt. There’s no point in going on if not everyone makes it.

“I’m sorry, Len,” she wails, scrabbling for the trusty pistol at her hip. “I’ll see you soon, and I promise that it’s going to work this time. It has to work.” Raising the pistol to her own head, she closes her eyes and wishes. There’s a moment where she doubts that she will be able to do all of this again, that maybe she will just die and not wake up again. That might not be so bad either. She pulls the trigger.

And then she wakes up from the dream.

**Author's Note:**

> The Ten of Swords in a tarot deck has awesome symbolism for this, the main meanings I gathered being crisis, loss, complete ruination. If reversed, it can mean fear of ruin or an inevitable end.


End file.
